1) I have been a member of a group for many years (Gann study group) . Last Friday I received a notification from the owner who was explaining the group was closing so he set up a new one somewhere else. I thought it would be nice if I made a backup. So I found a python script on github (there are dozen of scripts in various languages which can be used to backup a yahoo group there). It took me a couple of minute to get it working and then a while later. Voila ! I had it nicely packed on my hard drive. So why is it so hard to back up a group? I don't understand the problem.
2) "A phone company in the UK that assigns phone numbers using the groups and now will lose all those phone designations when it’s deleted."
What? Well OK why not.. But? They are a phone company. There must be someone able to scrape all this data? I don't get it? There are so many ways to extract data from yahoo group.